History in the Margins

Let me start with the short version: Endpapers: A Family Story of Books, War, Escape and Home is one of the best works of non-fiction I’ve read in a while. Here’s the long version: In 2017, former Sports Illustrated journalist Alexander Wolff set out to explore his family’s German roots. The result is an extraordinary…

I love books in which the author sets out on a personal quest to understand a historical question and lets the reader tag along. Four Lost Cities: A Secret History of the Urban Age by science journalist and science fiction novelist Annalee Newitz is such a book. Even better from my perspective, their quest is…

One thing I’ve missed over the last year has been “browsing with serendipity” in the library stacks.* My mother brought the phrase home from one of her library science classes a million years ago and it perfectly describes the feeling of finding a book that you didn’t know existed—and consequently didn’t know you needed—snuggled up…